The second period of his life shows the artist, the seeker, the man of boundless ambitions. He aspired to be "_litterateur savant et artiste_."[17] He had a passion for the beautiful, a passion for knowledge; for manuscripts, music, drama, science, especially that so-called science of the occult. When he traveled, he carried with him his valuable library, from which he would not be separated: carried also his two splendid organs, his chapel, his military household. He kept his own court of over two hundred mounted men, knights, squires, pages, all magnificently equipped and maintained at his expense. At two of his cities, Machecoul and Tiffanges, he maintained all the clergy of a cathedral and a collegiate church: dean, archdeacon, etc., etc., twenty-five to thirty persons, who (like the library) accompanied him on his travels, no less splendidly dressed than the knights and squires. Many pages of a bulky memoir are devoted to the various ways in which Gilles squandered his princely fortune. Our concern is with his efforts to restore it, or rather to make another when it was gone. In the course of his studies, he had not neglected the then-still-popular one of alchemy, and to this he turned when no more money was to be had. Gold, it appeared, could be made; if so, he was the man to make it. Workshops were set up at Tiffanges, perhaps in that gloomy donjon tower which alone remains to-day of all that Arabian Nights castle of splendor and luxury. Alchemists were summoned and wrought night and day, spurred on by promises and threats. Night and day they wrought; but no gold appeared. Fearing for their lives, they hinted at other and darker things that might be necessary; at other agencies which might produce the desired result. If my lord would call in, for example, those who dealt in magic----? Frantic in his quest, Gilles stopped at nothing. Necromancers were sent for, and came; they in turn summoned "spirits from the vasty deep" or elsewhere, who obediently appeared. Trembling, yet exultant, Gilles de Rais spoke to the demons, asking for knowledge, power and riches ("_science, puissance, et richesse_"), promising in return anything and everything except his life and his soul. The demons, naturally enough, made no reply to this one-sided offer. It is curious to read of the midnight scenes in that summer of 1439 when Gilles and his magician-friend Prelati, with their three attendants, tried to strike this bargain with the infernal powers. Torches, incense, pentacles, crucibles, etc., etc.; nothing was omitted. They adjured Satan, Belial, and Beelzebub to appear and "speak up"; adjured them, singularly enough, in the name of the Holy Trinity, of the Blessed Virgin and all the saints. The demons remained mute; nor were they moved by sacrifices of dove, pigeon or kid. Finally, a demon called "Barron" made response: it appeared that what the fiends desired was human sacrifice: that without it no favors might be expected of them.